Voicemail systems allow a calling party to leave a message for a called party, for example, when the called party is unavailable. Traditional voicemail systems (referred to herein as plain old voicemail or POVM) often allow a subscriber to place a call to a voicemail system to access messages stored in his or her voicemail box. This is often done through a telephone user interface (TUI) that facilitates interaction between the subscriber and the voicemail system. The TUI provides functions for the subscriber to listen to messages, skip messages, delete messages, and save messages. The TUI can also provide functions for the subscriber to set a voicemail greeting, record a voicemail greeting, record a name, and set/change a password.
With some voicemail systems, a subscriber with multiple voicemail messages is required to listen to, skip, delete, or save each message while reviewing the voicemail box. This is time consuming and can be frustrating for the subscriber in situations where an important message has been deposited, requiring the subscriber to listen to, skip, delete or save each message in search of the important message.
To help reduce the need to search through multiple messages, some voicemail systems have been developed that can allow messages to be stored based on a priority scheme to increase the efficiency of listening to voicemail messages. Some of these systems use a telephone number of the caller to identify a priority for a message and position the voicemail messages in order based on the assigned priorities. When the recipient accesses the voicemail system to acquire voicemail messages, the recipient can be presented with voicemail messages in order of the priority relating to the caller's telephone number. Other systems organize messages based upon the time and/or date of the message deposit to the voicemail system. With many of these voicemail systems, the recipient often must listen to and/or skip through multiple voicemail messages to find an important message. However, an important message can be easily relegated to a position of low importance if the subscriber previously has not set the priority for the caller, or if other less important messages are received after the more important message is deposited to the voicemail system, for example.